The help of the police was quite out of the question, for Wenk did not even know where he was. But how would it be to let the Prince into the secret, and get help in the company itself to secure the murderer? He could only do it if he were quite sure of the company, otherwise it was doomed to failure from the start. He knew from experience that this master criminal was always surrounded by a bodyguard of accomplices, and that they were people who shrank from no devilish deed. Around him there must be many of Mabuse’s confederates. Should Wenk, as if accidentally, make his way to some door and escape under cover of the darkness, leaving Mabuse to be dealt with at a later time, when he was better prepared to accomplish his overthrow ... or should he try unobserved to find a telephone in the house and summon the police? But then again, where were they to come to? “Isn’t it remarkable, Herr von Wenk? Have you ever seen anything like it before?” said Vörös. Wenk had heard the question, but he was so preoccupied with his own train of thought as to forget to answer it enthusiastically, as he had intended to do. In the torrent of ideas and possibilities which rushed through his mind he forgot his resolution. Vörös gave him a hasty glance, and just at that moment Weltmann asked for fresh assistants. Wenk, coming to a sudden resolve, pulled himself together and calmly and boldly ascended the stage, the very first to respond. Far better to look the wild beast in the face than be behind him! Then he noticed that Baron Prewitz, whom everybody had forgotten, followed him up. Stepping forward as before, automatically, he came after him, still holding the revolver. “You don’t venture into my domain without protection, I see, Herr von Wenk,” smiled the hypnotist. “That is just sarcasm,” said Wenk to himself; “he knows who I am!” Wenk merely bowed, as much as to say that in Rome he did as Rome does. He was now standing next the hypnotist, and each took the other’s measure. Wenk had pursued this werwolf with vindictive fury because in him he saw the enemy of all that could heal and restore the nation. When he stood there on the platform with him, isolated for a moment from all the rest, he felt as if they were two great powers going in opposite directions. To his mind it was no longer the conflict of good and evil; it was the struggle of man to man; and, oppressed as he felt, he still had something almost like confidence in the chivalry of his opponent ... a confidence that rested upon an impelling yet hardly perceptible instinct: both were staking their lives on the result of the struggle. Each was directing a fierce attack upon the other, yet both must make allowances in this last supreme moment. “If only I could sleep!” thought Wenk with an inward yearning.